Field, Formalisation, and Alienation: Entering the Field and Building Rapport During Social Distancing

Over-indebtedness—a situation in which individuals are unable to pay their expenses and debts get out of control—is increasing among young adults in Sweden, and predictions suggest that the problem will escalate after the COVID-19 pandemic. In this chapter we draw on our experience of initiating an ethnographic study of over-indebtedness among young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic, when opportunities to act in the field were severely limited. Even under normal circumstances, we anticipated that it might be challenging to find and recruit young people experiencing financial difficulties due to social stigma, and that this process would require careful methodological measures. When approaching such a field, the ability to build rapport and trust is crucial to gaining access. However, the social restrictions introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic precluded many of the traditional ways of reaching out (in)to the field. The field itself, as we had imagined it, with its institutions and physical social spaces, had changed drastically, forcing us to rethink how to approach the field. Following these experiences, we elaborate on the unarticulated preconceptions about ‘the field’ and relationship building that we had taken for granted. We discuss how the social distancing that characterised the pandemic fostered alienation and formalisation of the field, making it difficult to build trust in ethnographic fieldwork. However, even as we emphasise the importance of face-to-face social interactions in initiating ethnographic research, our experience shows that other procedures are viable, and sometimes more formal and impersonal means of contact may even be preferable.